


all of my roses

by snapchat (orphan_account)



Category: UP10TION
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Marriage Contracts, Rated T because at some point i think seungwoo drops the f bomb?, SLOW EVERYTHING!!!!! IM SICK!!!!, Slow Build, Slow Burn, if u notice plot holes please assume they were intentional i am tired, jinwoo/dohyon mentioned sort of? also babies, maybe he doesnt and it's rated T for Toil, side 2seung and sebyung, slenderman is mentioned once bc i have an agenda (not scary)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 19:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20030794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/snapchat
Summary: Wooseok and Jinhyuk make a pact to get married at twenty-six.





	all of my roses

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to k & n for forcing this fic out of me thru sheer intimidation alone and for preventing me from konmari-ing it at the very last second.

It’s close to ten on a Friday night when someone knocks on Jinhyuk’s door. 

"Hi," the someone says from behind a stack of _One Piece_ books that is promptly shoved into Jinhyuk's arms—and _fuck_, it's heavy, almost distracting enough for Jinhyuk to forget in the heat of the moment that he has _no idea_ who's blessing him with the Straw Hat Pirates’ journey over the years.

He knows a thing or two about stranger danger though, and it’s with much futility that he angles the books down so he can peek over them—

And recognition punches him in the stomach, tears the wind out of him. He's at a loss for words, doesn't really know what there is to say or how to say it, because he'd never, in a million years, thought that he'd lock his eyes with none other than _Kim Wooseok_ over fourteen volumes of _One Piece_.

How long has it been? It feels like a century.

"_Oh_," is the only thing Jinhyuk can manage. 

“Hey,” Wooseok greets, entirely unaffected, the faint tug of his lips painstakingly familiar. 

"Hey?" Jinhyuk exhales out. 

“Long time no see," Wooseok continues. He lets himself in and Jinhyuk is weak, helpless as he steps aside to make room. For a few seconds, Wooseok doesn’t say much at all, preoccupied with slipping his shoes—black leather, they look _nice_—off and taking in Jinhyuk’s humble abode. His hands find purchase in the pockets of his pants and Wooseok is deliberate, always is, when he turns to face Jinhyuk. "Want to get married?”

* * *

“Yeah, I forgot to tell you,” Seungwoo says, blissfully ignorant of how betrayed Jinhyuk feels. Idly, he thumbs through volume eight. Jinhyuk sort of spites him in the moment. “Kind of weird _he_ didn’t tell _you_. Don’t you guys text?” 

He lets out a faint sigh. “Sort of?” 

Seungwoo looks up from the book, brow raised. For someone who doesn't live in this apartment, he looks awfully comfortable, sprawled across Jinhyuk's couch like he owns it. Jinhyuk rubs his eyes, thinks back to when he feebly offered Wooseok a place to stay, stammering out something about a futon with _only one_ loose spring. Looking back, he’s embarrassed he didn’t think to ask, _Why don’t you stay_?

“Sort of?” Seungwoo echoes. 

"You know Wooseok," he replies with a wave of his hand. He isn’t entirely convinced he does anymore. That’s a different story, one Jinhyuk doesn’t want to grapple with right now. "He comes and goes. Texts when he wants to. Replies when he wants to." 

"Oh." Seungwoo returns his attention to the book. "Sounds about right. Still weird that he didn't tell you. Seems kind of like a big deal, doesn't it? Moving back to Korea after years of radio silence?" Jinhyuk parts his lips to protest. Seungwoo’s quick to notice. “_Sort of_ radio silence.”

Seungwoo's right. It _is_ kind of a big deal. And thinking back, Jinhyuk isn't sure why Wooseok didn't bother telling him. The entirety of their first re-encounter feels like a foggy memory, a little too strange, too comical, to seem real. After all, it's not every day that your childhood best friend rolls back into your life after a small lifetime to _propose_. 

"Did you say anything? Are you getting married? Big wedding? Small wedding? Live band? _Open bar_?" 

"I—_no_!" Jinhyuk sighs, long, frustrated, a mix between defeat and agitation. He pushes Seungwoo's legs off of the couch so he can secure his own seat, sinking back into the cushions, forearm pressed against his eyes. "Come on, hyung. I'm not going to marry someone out of the blue, even _if_ that someone's Kim Wooseok." 

There's a long pause in the conversation and in his thoughts, and Jinhyuk peeks past his arm to catch the incredulous look on Seungwoo's face. _Right_. It's just habit—making exceptions for Wooseok has always been a habit, and it's funny how things like that always seem to stick like glue. But the sentiment remains: youth may have been spent finding ways to treat Wooseok differently, but years have passed, things have changed, people have changed—_they've changed_. Jinhyuk isn't sure if he has the energy to humor the suggestion (“_Want to get married_?”) for a belated joke. 

"That makes sense." Seungwoo finally closes the book, tosses it onto the coffee table in front of him. (Jinhyuk grimaces. No bent corners.) He shifts until he's sitting properly, upright, arms folded across his chest. "Marriage _is_ a big jump from pining after each other from opposite ends of the earth, I guess."

"We never—" Jinhyuk groans. "I don't know why I thought talking to you would be helpful." 

"I'm kidding," Seungwoo says, lips pressed into a teasing smile. "To answer your question from thirty minutes ago, though, I didn't know Wooseok was coming back, let alone permanently. At least, I didn't hear it from him. Dongpyo told me, so I'm assuming Wooseok told him in one way or another but—" He hums. Seungwoo always does this thing where he minces his words, has to take a few seconds to really _consider_ them—make sure that what he’s about to say is worth what might follow. "I guess I just figured _you'd_ be at the top of the grapevine." 

His chest feels a little tight. 

"Yeah, well," Jinhyuk starts, shrugging his shoulders animatedly, "it's been a while. Wouldn't be surprised if I didn't cross his mind." 

"I wouldn't be so sure." Seungwoo stretches his arms above his head, rising to his feet. He'd come on short notice and Jinhyuk heard the sound of Seungsik's voice in the background during their ten-second distress phone call in the morning. He’s probably interfering on what was supposed to be a day spent together, and the guilt settles in a little too belatedly. "Have to catch up with Seungsik before he gets huffy that I'm spending my time off with you." 

"Seungsik hyung loves me."

"He does. He gets huffy because he'd rather be here," he jokes. "Good luck with everything. Oh—you said he had a place to stay, right?" 

Jinhyuk nods, offers a thumbs up. "Yep. Said he had an apartment already. I guess it's for real? I asked him if he wanted to catch up, you know, like, uh, not at ten at night—"

"Maybe without a proposal?"

"—yeah. He said he'd text me. Had some stuff to figure out and get cleared away before relaxing." Jinhyuk taps his fingers against the arm of the couch. It's not unlike Wooseok to have everything planned to a tee. Also not unlike Wooseok to keep everyone patently in the dark about it. "Maybe we can all get together soon. Like old times." 

"Like old times," repeats Seungwoo as he unplugs his phone from the wall charger Jinhyuk's left lying around. Idly, he scrolls through his notifications, a tiny smile on his face. Probably a text or three from Seungsik. _Must be nice being in love_, Jinhyuk thinks. "A lot sure can happen in three years, huh?" 

"Too much," Jinhyuk says with a grin, and he can't tell if he's joking.

* * *

They make a pact when they're eighteen and stupidly tipsy off of cans of _Cass_ smuggled from Wooseok’s dad’s stash. Cheeks red, shoulders pressed together, they’re _so close_ to each other that Jinhyuk can feel the warmth of Wooseok’s breath tickling his neck. He can’t really think straight—a little too preoccupied with how his best friend since _childhood_, the person he’s been in love with for what feels like a lifetime, looks so god damn pretty when he smiles. 

It’s why, when Wooseok suggests they get married at twenty-six if they haven’t found other people, Jinhyuk says _yes_. 

The morning after, when they’re both nursing baby hangovers and trying to hide crushed aluminum cans in various crevices of Jinhyuk’s room, Wooseok brings it up again. What Jinhyuk thought was a drunken joke turns into something semi-serious, and they spend the rest of the afternoon crouched over a piece of paper, shoulders bumping just like last night, ending an hour of drafting a subpar contract by coloring their thumbs with bright blue marker and pressing them to the bottom of the sheet. 

“_Now it’s official_,” Wooseok had said with a smile—Jinhyuk’s favorite smile. “_Maybe I’ll see you at twenty-six_.” 

And _now_ they’re twenty-six. Eight years have passed, three of them spent in almost isolation from each other. Jinhyuk hadn’t expected Wooseok to show up at his door months before twenty-seven looking much like a ghost of his past, jumping back in time to eighteen to make the same suggestion again. 

He realizes belatedly that he never did tell Seungwoo what he said. Wooseok had asked him to get married and Jinhyuk, in his panic, blurted out that he couldn’t—wouldn’t, because he was seeing someone, had a _boyfriend_, long-term, committed. 

It’s hard to forget the way Wooseok’s expression flickered from shock back to practiced neutrality, his lips curving into a careful smile, hardly reaching his eyes. “_Congratulations_,” Wooseok told him. “_What else is going on in your life_?”

Over the course of about thirty minutes of laughing too loudly (nervous habit) through a retelling of the past three, almost four, years spent in sporadic bursts of worry, Wooseok asked for his boyfriend’s name, repeated his congratulations, and then went on his way without sharing more than vague tidbits of what he’d been up to. 

Jinhyuk covers his face with his hands. “So that’s what happened. And this is where we are right now.”

“Except I’m not your boyfriend?” Byungchan blinks. He slurps his strawberry smoothie noisily. Anyone else and it’d be obnoxious. “Except I _have_ a boyfriend? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to use a single person’s name? Yein hyung’s single. He’s so single it hurts. _Minkyu_’s single. He would have cried tears of joy if you used him as your fake boyfriend.” Maybe it’s still obnoxious, after all. 

Jinhyuk drags his hands down his face and wonders how palpable his agony is. “It’s too late. I already blurted out your name.” 

“I have pictures of Sejun hyung shirtless on my Instagram,” Byungchan says sagely. “I’m pretty sure Wooseok hyung follows me on Instagram. He should know by now that my type is cute smile and abs, not Slenderman and cries over anime.” 

“I don’t—” He _did_ cry watching One Piece to cope last night. Luffy would never abandon Zoro for three years out of the blue and come back looking surreally handsomer asking for Zoro’s hand in marriage. “I’m not Slenderman?”

“You’re slender,” Byungchan replies, holding one finger up. He lifts a second. “And you’re a man.” 

Jinhyuk lets out a tiny breath of disbelief before leering into his watermelon juice. “Okay, so I didn’t think this through. So, I panicked! He’ll probably find out I lied to him and I’ll irreparably destroy our already delicate friendship. Is it my fault? Maybe. But was I expecting to see Kim Wooseok of all people last night? No! Was I expecting to be smacked in the face with the heart-crushing realization that wow, I’m still in love with—”

By the time Jinhyuk realizes he has been Ranting with a capital RANTING, Byungchan has fallen deathly silent, staring holes into Jinhyuk’s face while he gnaws on his straw. 

“I see,” he says. And Jinhyuk feels incredibly bare and exposed to the masses. “Okay.”

“That’s—I didn’t mean that, really… I don’t _think_ I meant that. I, it just, uh…” 

“I mean,” Byungchan says, and Jinhyuk can tell he’s being careful, “there’s nothing wrong with that.”

But there is. 

Jinhyuk _knows_ there’s something wrong with being in love with the same person since he was _ten-years-old_. Maybe that’s a stretch, but it doesn’t feel like one, because for as long as Jinhyuk can remember, it’s always been Wooseok. And when it wasn’t Wooseok, it’d come back to Wooseok. Maybe if the circumstances were different, it’d be an easier pill to swallow, but Jinhyuk isn’t the one who fell off the face of the planet for years, using Wooseok’s heart as a stepping stone each leg of the journey.

He doesn’t want to be bitter, and for the most part, he genuinely believes he isn’t. But he _is_ heartbroken, he _is_ tired, and there’s this phantom thought at the back of his mind that lingers, even now: _You never know when he’ll leave again._

“I guess not,” Jinhyuk says in spite of the thoughts racing through his mind. He lets out a laugh, but it’s a little too raw, hoarse. “I just—I know Wooseok. He doesn’t really mean it.” 

Byungchan frowns, parts his lips to say something, but Jinhyuk interjects.

“Anyway, sorry, I didn’t mean to drag you out to rant at you,” apologizes Jinhyuk, lips fixed into a grin. “I just wanted to tell you I accidentally told my best friend—” _Is that even right anymore_? “—of sixteen years that I’m dating you because I thought you’d get a laugh out of it.” 

“You’re allowed to rant at me,” Byungchan says, pursing his lips. He looks petulant, as he usually does when he’s holding back on what he wants to say. Jinhyuk’s grateful—he isn’t sure if he’s ready to hear it. “Sorry we have to fake-break-up so soon, hyung. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m way out of your fake-league. We never would have made it to fake-marriage.” 

To Byungchan’s credit, he looks genuinely apologetic. 

Jinhyuk rolls his eyes, biting back a laugh as he reaches across to whack at the brim of Byungchan’s baseball cap. “If only things were that easy, huh?” 

* * *

Even his mom knows Wooseok’s back. 

Jinhyuk isn’t so convinced anymore. It’s been a solid week since their first fateful encounter (re-encounter?) and he’s getting all-too familiar radio silence. Almost as though Wooseok’s faded into the ether, stayed just long enough to leave a permanent mark in Jinhyuk’s mind, only to disappear again. 

That’s an exaggeration though. He’s seen Wooseok—in Byungchan’s Instagram stories and Hwanhee’s posts. He’s even heard Wooseok’s voice, faintly, in the background of a call with Yein, the call cut short abruptly because Ikea was too loud for talking. Fucked up because Jinhyuk _loves_ Ikea, but he refuses to be a child about this. 

It’s hard not to be a little bitter, to be honest. 

_Yein_ isn’t the one who sat through years and years of teenage angst, coaxing the bitterly concealed troubles out of Wooseok’s mouth—a daunting task, almost as exhausting as punching the upperclassman who started shit with Wooseok square in the face. Fist fights aren’t as fun as the movies makes them out to be, and that one is Jinhyuk’s first and last. Wooseok’s guilty for months but Jinhyuk doesn’t mind the ugly black eye; he laughs, too young and too stupid to understand why seeing Wooseok’s eyes tremble made him so angry in the first place. 

_Byungchan_ isn’t the one who gave up going to their high school’s biggest festival of the year to keep a bedridden Wooseok company. Maybe he didn’t have to skip out on it, but he did, and as much as he wants to regret it, he doesn’t. Because he’s always made stupid excuses for Wooseok, and back then, it’d made too much sense to play video games for three hours straight until the cold medication kicked in and all Jinhyuk could hear was the sound of Wooseok’s steady breathing and Mario cheering from the television screen. 

He doesn’t particularly enjoy dwelling in his thoughts like this. A part of him feels apologetic, feels a little childish for pointing fingers, for trying to justify the ugly, twisting feeling at the bottom of his gut. He’s just about ready to call it quits for the night; ready to retire early, to crawl into bed with a lesson plan for Monday—proactivity subbing in as a desperate attempt at silencing his insistent thoughts.

The bell rings and Jinhyuk opens the door without checking his intercom. What’s with the late-night visitors these days anyway? “Who is i—”

_Oh_.

“Hey.” Wooseok offers a tiny smile. He looks exhausted—dark circles almost like bruises beneath his eyes, his glasses crooked atop the bridge of his nose. He’s wearing a white button-up shirt, sleeves loosened, hands balancing two plastic bags holding packages of food from different shops. It almost looks like he’s spent an eternity in the office, a Saturday wasted over work. “Sorry, I was in the neighborhood. Were you about to sleep?”

_Yes_. “No,” Jinhyuk says immediately, opening the door wider and stepping back, letting Wooseok enter. He must look stupid right now, eyes wide, mouth slightly ajar. Kind of scary how even after all of these years, their red thread must still be holding on, clinging on despite everything. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” Wooseok scoffs out, setting the bags on the coffee table and plopping down onto the couch. He closes his eyes for a second, hands folded on his stomach. “I brought chicken feet. And sushi.” 

Jinhyuk hums, rooting through the bags before procuring a container of _nigiri_. He sinks down on the seat next to Wooseok, maintaining a few palms of distance. “Long day? Furniture shopping with Yein was that bad?” 

“He has zero eye for color,” grumbles Wooseok, eyes still shut. “So,” he says instead, his tone almost lilting, “you’re dating Byungchan, huh?” 

He winces. “Yeah, about that…”

“I get it,” Wooseok says with a gentle curve of the lips. He opens his eyes then, reaching beneath a lens to rub at one of them insistently. “Not every day your best friend shows up unannounced asking for your hand in marriage.” 

It’s kind of annoying how comforting it is hearing Wooseok call himself Jinhyuk’s best friend.

“I guess it would have been nice to get a text,” Jinhyuk says, and he’s half-teasing, half-serious. “But considering your track record, maybe I should lower my expectations.”

Wooseok pauses. “Sorry,” he starts, gaze fixed on Jinhyuk’s hands as he tries to break apart a pair of wooden chopsticks. Crooked. Isn’t this bad luck or something? “For being so—”

“So _Wooseok_?” Jinhyuk suggests around a mouthful of salmon, grinning in spite of himself.

Wooseok narrows his eyes before shaking his head, the hint of a smile lingering. He seems apologetic enough that their only correspondence over the past three years has been through half-hearted text message conversations and sporadic photos of skyward buildings in Tokyo. Every now and then, he’d get a thirty-second phone call, a single _I miss you too_ worked into the chaos of trying to figure out how to say _When are you coming back?_ only to lose the opportunity every time.

Old habits really do die hard. Moments ago, Jinhyuk had been ruminating in all of the reasons he had to spite Wooseok—for the past three years, for the past seven days—only to come back to this: comfortable silence, the _thump thump_ of his heart aligning itself with Wooseok’s as though no time has passed at all.

He should stop making exceptions for people. Should stop stretching his rules for Wooseok. 

“Hey, Jinhyuk,” Wooseok says, crouching forward, tugging the lid off of a plastic container of chicken feet bathing in a dark red marinade. “Don’t laugh, but I really missed you.” 

Jinhyuk swallows thickly, fixes his expression into one of comical incredulity. He raises his brow. “You sick or something?” he asks instead. “Sure, sure, I missed you too. Missed you so much I could cry!”

Wooseok doesn’t reply immediately, only snaps his own chopsticks in half—crooked, too—before saying, poised as always, “Also, you look ugly when you talk with your mouth full.”

* * *

For university, Jinhyuk goes to Konkuk. He, like ninety-nine percent of their high school friend group, decides to major in some strand of engineering. Wooseok goes to Yonsei for architecture. And for four years, they figure out how best to meet in-between, spending many a night at the nearest _pocha_ between their apartment buildings bemoaning the future and how daunting it is—a palpable fear coaxed only by the fact that they’d be tackling it _together_. 

At some point, Jinhyuk switches his major to education and Wooseok brings him a tiered _Chocopie_ cake as a congratulations for not giving into herd mentality. 

Jinhyuk’s first and last serious relationship starts in the months leading up to graduation. It isn’t fair to call it serious when he really only needed it, wanted it as a distraction, a last-ditch effort at convincing himself that his feelings for Wooseok were just the remnants of his youth, of his childhood. He fails. Realizes instead that his feelings for Wooseok are anything _but_ traces of their time spent together, but actually something wholly—scarily—more. 

By then, Wooseok’s left for Tokyo. By then, Jinhyuk’s too preoccupied with military service to dwell on a broken heart. That’s what he tells himself, at least. Even in the military, he laughs when his squad members ask about his girlfriend and the only thing that comes to mind is eighteen, shoulder-to-shoulder, Wooseok’s _smile_. 

When he gets out of the military, Wooseok’s still gone. Jinhyuk starts teaching. Middle school boys need a lot of guidance; he’d know because he wishes he had more at their age. He tries to move on, again, with much futility, lapsing into momentary bitterness every time another day passes and all he has to show for it is a text message that says _sorry, don’t know when i’ll be back_. 

“You should just call and ask,” Yein tells him one day, all while gnawing absentmindedly on a strip of dried squid. When they were younger, the third chair used to be occupied. Wooseok would be monopolizing the dried squid and Yein and Jinhyuk both let him. “It’s not like he wouldn’t pick up. It’s _you_. Wooseok can’t just _ignore you_.” 

Yein might have been right, but the Jinhyuk then wasn’t sure he could handle being proven wrong. 

“He’ll come back when he’s ready,” Jinhyuk remembers saying in response, fingers curled around a glass of _soju_. “He’ll come back.”

* * *

“I’ve connected the dots,” Byungchan announces. 

Jinhyuk looks up from his notebook and he already feels a little exhausted. “I don’t want to know.”

“Wooseok hyung is back in Seoul because he’s hiding from the yakuza. Clearly, he has no other reason to be here. It’s not like he—”

Seungwoo doesn’t even tear his gaze away from volume thirteen. “You haven’t connected shit.” 

Byungchan hardly looks miffed. “What am I supposed to say? He came back because he’s in love with Jinhyuk hyung? Way too cliché. Viewer ratings would be abysmal.”

“My life isn’t a drama,” Jinhyuk says weakly. The only progress he’s made on his lesson plan thus far is a single note: _how to get kids to stop dabbing???_

“A midday soap at best,” Byungchan corrects. “Okay, I’m kidding, but also—seriously? Yakuza or cliché love story? _Yakuza_. If we’re trying to rake in the viewers—”

“Take it from one of the _only_ viewers, I’d rather see Wooseok and Jinhyuk get over their emotional constipation and make out than see Wooseok reveal he’s the boy with the dragon tattoo.” Seungwoo flips a page. At this point, Jinhyuk isn’t even sure if he’s actually reading. 

“Wooseok doesn’t feel that way about me,” Jinhyuk says, scribbling nonsense in the margins of his notes.

Byungchan plops down in the chair across from him, hands folded beneath his chin. “But you do?” 

He stops writing. “I never said that?” Jinhyuk twirls his pencil in his hand. “I don’t. We’re both different people. Moved on. You should move on too!” He isn’t convinced. No one else in the room is either. 

“Try connecting the dots now,” Seungwoo suggests from the couch he’s occupying. 

Jinhyuk covers his face with his hands. “You guys are driving me crazy.”

If anyone knows how Jinhyuk’s been (failing at) coping over the past few years, it’s probably Seungwoo or Byungchan. He’s been careful with what he says around Yein—only because he isn’t sure if he can filter that away from Wooseok’s ears one way or another. But still, something about admitting that he’s been in love with the same boy since he was ten-years-old feels taboo, feels _hopeless_. Like he’ll really feel the weight of his despair if he breathes life into the errant thought. 

When he looks up from his notebook, Byungchan is peering at him too intently. 

“_What_,” Jinhyuk sighs out.

“Nothing,” says Byungchan, looking exaggeratedly suspicious with the way he pouts his lips, cheeks half-inflated. “Just wondering when you’re going to cut yourself some slack!” 

“Signs point to never,” Seungwoo muses.

“_Can you guys just go home_?” 

* * *

Over the course of the next few weeks, he falls into a routine with Wooseok. 

Every Friday night, the doorbell rings close to ten and Wooseok will stand outside with two plastic bags: one with chicken feet, the other with a variation of Jinhyuk’s favorite foods. 

They’ll spend a couple of hours in meaningless conversation and on the better nights, when the bruises beneath Wooseok’s eyes are less apparent, Jinhyuk will poke and prod until Wooseok gives and talks more about himself, about what the past three years have been for _him_.

So far, Jinhyuk knows that the pictures of random buildings Wooseok has sent over the years are buildings that Wooseok helped _build_. There are three in total—all skyscrapers, and one in particular that he’s especially proud of. “_I was the lead architect_,” Wooseok explains, and he reminds Jinhyuk it’s easy to remember which of the three near-identical skyscrapers it is because of the chrome metallic clock shaped like a sun perched at the very top. 

(“Why a sun?” Jinhyuk had asked, spoon digging in a bowl of _kimchi jjigae_ for a chunk of tuna. 

“Just because,” Wooseok said with a shrug. “It was my motivation.”)

Jinhyuk also knows that Wooseok hasn’t dated, hasn’t thought about settling down since he left Korea. His mom’s probably nagging him as much as Jinhyuk’s mom is nagging Jinhyuk. He knows Tokyo was _hard_ for Wooseok because Wooseok gets homesick—for places, for little corners of Seoul, for _people_, but he’d stiffened when asked to elaborate. 

Every Friday night, they talk for a few hours until it’s edging toward the brink of being too late to function. Wooseok will grab his briefcase, his jacket, and wave off Jinhyuk’s offers of the futon, _It’s comfy, I promise!_

Some weeks are better. They’ll see each other in-between Fridays, usually in the company of their other friends. Wooseok always relaxes in Seungwoo’s company, doesn’t fuss much when Seungsik complains about how much weight he’s lost while away. Yein clings to Wooseok’s side like glue—like he’s scared he might disappear, too. Byungchan presses Wooseok for more information on Japan’s saunas and on the days Sejun can make it, he’s comically deliberate about dragging Byungchan away by the ear, apologizing for his _nuisance of a boyfriend_. 

On one day in particular, Hwanhee comes out and bickers with Wooseok for the entire two hours they loiter at a café together and Jinhyuk’s chest is warm with familiarity for the next week.

“What are you thinking about?” Wooseok asks, staring at Jinhyuk curiously, his lips pressed against a can of _Hite_. Jinhyuk can’t remember the last time he bought _Cass_, let alone the last time he drank it. It might have been eighteen, Wooseok’s shoulders pressed to his, stupid promises thick in the air. “You’re smiling to yourself. Creep.”

Jinhyuk waggles his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he sing-songs. 

“_Creep_,” Wooseok emphasizes, shaking his head. 

“Just thinking about how you’re here,” Jinhyuk says with a grin. “Flesh and blood! Who would have thought you’d actually come back to Seoul?” 

“I wasn’t ever planning on leaving for good,” Wooseok replies. He rolls his eyes, leaning back in his seat. “Were you betting on me staying out of your hair forever?” 

_As if_, Jinhyuk doesn’t say aloud. _Imagine if I could._

“Why’d you come back anyway?” That isn’t what he wants to know. “Why’d you leave in the first place?”

Wooseok taps his fingers against the aluminum can in his hands, has the heart to look pensive before shrugging. “Was running away from something,” he says, and it’s so unsatisfying—the way he never answers the question in full, always leaves Jinhyuk reaching, yearning for more. “From someone?” he murmurs, mostly to himself. 

“Someone?” Jinhyuk echoes, because he always catches every word of what Wooseok has to say. 

“Yeah,” Wooseok continues. “Same someone I kept building things for. _Keep_ building things for.” 

He can’t think of anyone Wooseok could possibly have left behind in Korea, and he doesn’t want to be so _self-centered_ as to think of himself. But there’s that tiny clench of his heart again, a bittersweet reminder that there are a lot of things, too many things, Jinhyuk’s too selfish not to indulge.

“Remember when we were making our marriage pact?” Jinhyuk asks, changing the subject. Maybe it’s the buzz? Wooseok’s cheeks almost look pink, his eyes almost look _brighter_. “We started talking about the house we were going to live in. I guess looking back, you can’t really find anything like that in a place like Seoul.”

“What, a backyard?” teases Wooseok.

“A backyard,” Jinhyuk agrees, “and a white picket fence. A garden that’s going to die inevitably. White walls. Dark roof.”

“Five rooms,” Wooseok hums. “One for Byungchan because we didn’t think he’d ever have the balls to ask Sejun out.” 

“Bet you’re bummed you missed that one.” Jinhyuk laughs, and it’s weird—he’s happy but it feels too raw, too new. “They started arguing two seconds into the confession because Sejun wanted to ask Byungchan out first.” 

“Makes sense.” Wooseok stifles a laugh too. “They tiptoed around each other for years until they were both racing toward the same thing.” 

“Hey, Wooseok—" Jinhyuk’s throat feels dry. It’s the alcohol. He’s usually better, but maybe he hasn’t eaten enough. What other excuses can he muster up? Maybe he’s desperate. “Why’d you ask me to marry you the second you got here?” 

The smile on Wooseok’s face fades and Jinhyuk already regrets asking, poised to retract the question when Wooseok says, “Pact’s a pact.”

“Isn’t this the part where you tell me you’re secretly in love with me?” Jinhyuk asks, and he’s teasing, he _really_ is, but his voice almost cracks at the end and he’s wondering if he’s still as easy to read as he was three years ago. 

“Hah.” Wooseok shifts until he’s lying down on the couch, back flat against the cushions, his legs propped up on Jinhyuk’s lap. He’s already closing his eyes, glasses slipping off of his face. “I don’t like getting my hopes up.” 

He means to ask _What do you mean?_ but the rational part of him, smaller in presence but still there, pulls the question away from the tip of his tongue, hides it away. _Not now_, his conscience urges. “What’s this? You’re actually staying the night?”

“I’m too tired to go home,” Wooseok explains, half-mumbling. “Your futon better not break my back.”

His stomach churns. Unanswered questions sit at the very core of his solar plexus, collecting—close to bursting. It’s hard to dwell on all of the complexities of their conversation though, because when Wooseok’s like this—features softened, his hair in disarray; white dress shirt abandoned in favor of Jinhyuk’s _Detective Conan_ t-shirt, a few sizes too large for Wooseok’s stature—the only thought Jinhyuk can muster up is how _nice_ it’d be to kiss him right then and there.

He’s gentle as he slips off of the couch, careful not to jostle Wooseok too much in the process. “I’ll grab you a blanket,” Jinhyuk says, voice thick with something unspoken. “About _time_ you let me take care of you,” he teases.

“Yeah,” Jinhyuk pretends not to hear Wooseok murmur. “_Maybe_.” 

* * *

The next day when Jinhyuk wakes up, there’s no trace of Wooseok. The blanket is folded neatly, settled on one end of the couch. The t-shirt’s right on top. There’s a bowl of egg soup on the kitchen table next to a note.

_worst futon ever  
you owe me a back massage_

_p.s. i tried, but i suck at cooking_

He takes a sip of the soup. It’s terrible. Jinhyuk laughs and finishes it anyway.

* * *

There’s a part of him that wants to believe he’s moved on. 

It’s a byproduct of residual trauma, maybe. A tiny voice at the back of Jinhyuk’s mind reminding him that he never thought Wooseok would leave all those years ago—what’s stopping Wooseok from leaving again? 

And maybe that’s why he’s reluctant to dwell on his feelings, reluctant to contemplate them, reluctant to let them grow into something beyond his control.

(That is—if they were _ever_ in Jinhyuk’s control.)

Jinwoo’s face is buried in his arms, his shoulders trembling. There’s no one else in the classroom but them, and Jinhyuk almost wishes Dohyon had lagged behind like he usually does. 

“He’s going to _hate_ me,” Jinwoo whispers. 

“Who’s going to hate you?” 

“Dohyon.”

Jinhyuk frowns, pulling up a chair next to Jinwoo’s desk and seating himself right across from the younger boy. “Why would Dohyon hate you? You’re his best friend.” 

“He’ll think I’m weird,” Jinwoo grumbles, and in spite of Jinhyuk’s attempts at coaxing him to lift his head, he stays put, hiding his expression from the rest of the world. “Everyone else thinks I’m weird because I like him best.” 

Most middle school boys like to bide their time by pushing each other on the soccer field, laughter loud and vibrant even as they tumble through the grass, chasing wind and intangible things more than they chase anything, anyone else. His kids are good kids—all of them—and Jinwoo in particular is especially diligent, especially _gentle_. 

“What’s wrong with that?” Jinhyuk asks. 

Another moment of silence passes before Jinwoo raises his head. His eyes are wet, glassy, and his lips quiver as he tries to find the words. “I want to keep holding his hand,” he explains through deep inhales, exhales. “But I don’t want him to think I’m _weird_.” 

Dohyon is loud where Jinwoo is quiet, and in most respects, they’re polar opposites. One buoyant, surrounded by people—the other with his back pressed closer to the wall. But Jinhyuk’s never missed the way Dohyon’s gaze always scans the classroom at the last minute, how he always digs his way through the crowd to latch onto Jinwoo’s hand, pulling him forward until they’re shoulder-to-shoulder, walking step-by-step. 

“Jinwoo, I don’t think Dohyon would think you’re weird,” Jinhyuk says through a smile. “What’s so weird about holding your best friend’s hand? You wouldn’t want to lose him, would you?” 

Something resonates with Jinhyuk and it’s uncomfortable, the way his mind clings to childhood memories of Wooseok. He’d probably done something similar back then—pulled Wooseok out from the crowd to drag him onto the soccer field, hand-in-hand. When did he ever let go? _Why_ did he ever let go?

“But—”

“Jinwoo!” Dohyon’s voice is loud, unintentionally sharp. There’s a big grin on his face as he peers in from the doorway. “I was looking all over for y—huh? What the? Why are you crying? Hey! Teacher! You’re not allowed to make Jinwoo cry! That’s against the law!”

Before Jinhyuk has the chance to defend himself, Jinwoo interjects huffily. “He didn’t make me cry, stupid!” Any other day and Jinhyuk would have subjected them to his _nice words versus mean words_ speech. Any other day, but he’s soft too. Jinwoo rubs at his eyes with his sleeves and puffs up his chest like he’s forgotten his heartache of thirty seconds ago. 

“Oh.” Realization dawns on Dohyon for a second and the smile’s back before Jinhyuk knows it. “Okay, good.” He reaches out, hand wrapping around Jinwoo’s automatically. “Let’s go!” 

Jinwoo’s gaze lingers on their hands and then back at Jinhyuk and then on Dohyon’s unchanging expression. He’s huffy as he wipes away the last of his tears with his stray hand, hopping out of his seat and letting Dohyon drag him all the way to the classroom entryway before remembering to turn around. 

“Thank you!” he says, sounding much surer of himself than he did ten minutes ago.

Jinhyuk waves his hand, dismissing them without so much as a word. 

It’s just him in the classroom. Jinhyuk closes his eyes and leans back in the too-small chair. He can’t think of the reason. At some point, he lost sight of Wooseok’s hand. At _some_ point, it got too easy to lose Wooseok in a crowd.

At some point, the half a kilometer of distance between them became an ocean. A sea. 

At some point, maybe it was Jinhyuk who let go. 

* * *

He has a strange dream that night where Wooseok’s perched at the top of his favorite building in Tokyo—the one with the sun-shaped clock. Wooseok reaches a hand out to Jinhyuk, who’s climbing up the walls as desperately as he can. 

Maybe he falls. Maybe he doesn’t. 

Jinhyuk wakes up before he can find out, and when he texts Wooseok to ask how tall the building is, he doesn’t realize it’s four in the morning until Wooseok texts back.

**Kim Wooseok**

thinking of me instead of sleeping?  
it’s too tall to climb, but the sun’s up there for a reason  
you don’t need to climb it

* * *

Wooseok’s apartment is high-end, sleek edges and white everything. 

“That’s what you get when you’re a hotshot architect,” Yein sighs out, his voice muffled over the phone. “Must be nice. I should try to marry rich. You think Wooseok will marry me if I ask nicely? I guess I could blackmail him into it if I had to. I have some embarrassing photos I’ve been looking for reason to use.” 

In the middle of Jinhyuk’s lunch break, he’d gotten a text from Seungsik.

**Kang Seungsik **

hi not to worry you but wooseok’s in the hospital  
the one in your school’s neighborhood  
can you check on him? if you can?  
just thought i’d tell you bc i doubt he did  
if you can’t lmk and i’ll try to close shop early 

And he manages to corral a fledgling student teacher, Yohan, to take his place for the rest of the day, citing something about _hands-on training_, and how competence is _really_ only built from experience. Needless to say, Jinhyuk finds a way out. The hospital ends up redirecting him, explaining that the patient he’s looking for checked out just thirty minutes prior. And it’s only when he’s exiting a local restaurant, a giant bowl of porridge secured in a plastic bag, that he realizes he’s never been to Wooseok’s new place.

By the time he finds it—with Yein’s help—he’s a little embarrassed.

“Man,” Jinhyuk says into the receiver. There are three pairs of identical black leather dress shoes lined up at the doorway. One pair of white sneakers stowed a little further off. He’d taken a wild guess at the passcode, felt a little sheepish about using his own birthday, but it ended up being right, only going to show that Wooseok is predictable in the simplest ways. Jinhyuk is too. His passcode’s still Wooseok’s birthday. “Feeling like a real loser for letting him stay at my tiny apartment when he had this nice of a place to come home to.”

“Way too big for one person,” Yein agrees. “_Which is why_, if you’re not going to marry him, I will.”

“Alright, I’m hanging up,” Jinhyuk says, lips curving into a smile when he hears Yein’s squawk of disapproval. “Actually though. I don’t want to wake him.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” grumbles Yein, though Jinhyuk can tell he hardly means it. “Take care of him, okay? Let me know if you need to dip out anytime and I’ll send my loyal servants to take your place.”

“Going to tell Hwanhee and Dongyeol you keep calling them your servants.”

“Tell them. I don’t fear children,” Yein sniffs. “Hanging up. Good luck! Hope he lives!” 

He’d sprinted to the hospital in a panic earlier, Seungsik’s text message too vague for comfort. In his mind, Jinhyuk had been imagining something terrible. Maybe he got hurt while he was surveying a construction site. Maybe he’d broken a bone. Maybe—_maybe_… 

“_Malnutrition, fatigue, stress, and a common cold_,” the nurse had explained. “_He’s overworked. We gave him an IV drip, but after a while he said he was feeling better. Checked his status and then we sent him home_.”

There’s a near-empty room in Wooseok’s apartment that’s entirely barren save for one suitcase stowed in the corner. The door to the room across it is shut, and Jinhyuk is careful as he opens it, peeking inside and just barely noticing the outline of a Wooseok-sized lump on the bed. 

He’s quiet as he approaches, the porridge abandoned on the kitchen counter. All he has with him now is a glass of water, a white bag of medicine, and himself. For some reason, that doesn’t seem enough and his heart races traitorously as Jinhyuk settles himself on the edge of the bed next to Wooseok.

Wooseok shifts almost instantly. “Mom?” he murmurs, voice hoarse, tight.

“Yes, my dear son,” Jinhyuk says in forced falsetto. His voice veers at the end and he coughs. Wooseok stirs even more, his head poking out from beneath the covers.

“Jinhyuk?” Wooseok tries again. He shifts, attempting to sit up properly, but Jinhyuk places a hand on his arm to keep him in place. Wooseok’s hot to the touch. “What are you—” Wooseok pauses, squirms a bit until he’s lying on his back, the covers pulled up to his neck. “You smell like sweat. Did you run here?” 

“Seungsik hyung said you were at the hospital. The hospital said you went home,” Jinhyuk says, as though that’s explanation enough. 

Wooseok frowns. “So, you ran here?” 

He hesitates for a second before reaching out, pressing a hand to Wooseok’s forehead. “Yeah, I did. Sorry I smell. I was a little too worried about my best friend to think about taking a shower,” he says, tone far from malicious. “There’s this cool new trend these days where you take care of yourself and stop prioritizing your work over your health. Heard of it?” 

Wooseok’s eyes flutter, nearly falling shut. He snorts. “Nope. Sounds stupid.” 

“It’s not,” insists Jinhyuk. He should have grabbed a towel. Wooseok’s forehead is damp with sweat too. “I brought you some medicine and some water. There’s food on the counter, too, if you’re up for it.” 

“I’m not.”

“Figures, you big baby.” 

Wooseok stirs. “You really ran here?” he asks again. 

“Yeah,” Jinhyuk answers quietly. “And I’m super out of shape, so you’re basically indebted to me because a ton of people probably laughed at me.” 

“I’m fine,” Wooseok says in response, and this time, his eyes do close. “You can leave. Run back home.” 

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” teases Jinhyuk. He reaches out again, pushes the hair away from Wooseok’s forehead. He’s good for the day, planning on staying until Wooseok’s had some food. “Hey, I’m not kidding though. I don’t know what kind of work ethic you built up while you were away in Tokyo, but you’re in Seoul now, and by proxy, under my supervision. You need to take care of yourself, dummy.” 

“This is why I wanted to marry you,” Wooseok mumbles, and Jinhyuk can barely make out what he’s saying. “You’re too good at taking care of people.”

Jinhyuk freezes. “What?”

“This is why I can’t fall out of love with you,” Wooseok murmurs. 

Maybe it’s the sickness talking. It lulls Wooseok to sleep before he has the chance to confirm what Jinhyuk only half-believes he just heard.

“Jinhyuk?” Wooseok’s barely conscious, his hand slipping past the covers, fumbling until it finds Jinhyuk’s. His words grow quieter with each step he takes toward dreamland, syllables slurred. “_Thanks._” 

In the quiet of Wooseok’s room, Jinhyuk’s heart beats thunderously. 

* * *

It hits him out of nowhere. The pained expression on Wooseok’s face all those years ago when Jinhyuk first introduced him to his then-girlfriend. 

“Graduation’s in a couple of months,” Jinhyuk had commented absentmindedly. “Where do you think we’ll end up?”

He hadn’t paid enough attention then to the way Wooseok’s hands stilled, the blades of grass he’d been tearing into thinner strips scattered at his feet. 

“Don’t know,” Wooseok had said, gaze fixed onto the moon, the stars, and then Jinhyuk. “Somewhere easier to breathe?”

* * *

He ends up running away. Leaves a note by Wooseok on the nightstand that says _text me if you need anything! eat the porridge on the counter!_ and a little sun drawn in the corner at the last minute. 

And then he runs away, pace quickening the further he gets from Wooseok’s high-rise apartment building until he finds himself standing in front of someone else’s, hand shaking as he presses the buzzer. 

“_Who is it_?” a voice grumbles, groggy and thick with sleep, through the intercom. “It’s—oh, Jinhyuk? Is that you, Jinhyuk?” 

He doesn’t answer, waits for the door to open instead. Seungsik looks a little startled, a little concerned, but otherwise okay with Jinhyuk’s surprise visit. 

“Jinhyuk, are you okay?” Seungsik asks, blinking the sleep away from his eyes. 

The smile on Jinhyuk’s face must seem close to breaking. It _feels_ close to breaking, and he’s almost scared to speak, worried that he won’t be able to. “I think I’m in love with Wooseok.” 

“Oh,” Seungsik says softly, empathetically. “Hold on, let me wake Seungw—”

Seungwoo staggers in behind Seungsik, looking less than enthused that this is the reason why he’s been jostled out of bed at three in the morning. “Feel like this could have waited,” he says. “Definitely feel like this could have waited until nine in the morning. Maybe ten. Eleven?” 

“_Hey_,” Seungsik warns.

“I mean, come on in, Jinhyuk. Please make yourself at home. Never mind the fact that it’s three in the morning and some of us like to sleep normal hour—”

“Ahem,” Seungsik warns. Again. Jinhyuk is eternally grateful.

This time, Seungwoo only huffs half-heartedly. 

“Have you slept at all?” Seungsik asks, corralling Jinhyuk into the dining room, where a single table with four chairs is perched outside of the kitchen. 

“No,” Jinhyuk admits. “But it’s kind of—it’s kind of hard to? Because, I—god, _god_.” He laughs. It hurts a little. It hurts a _lot_. “How could I be so stupid?” 

Seungwoo sinks into the chair opposite Jinhyuk, Seungsik following suit next to Seungwoo. 

“So, you’re in love with Wooseok,” Seungwoo posits. “Nothing new. What’s the big deal?”

Jinhyuk stills. “He’s here,” he says feebly, and it’s a wonder he’s still smiling. “I can’t run away from it anymore. Can’t run away from _him_.” 

The exhaustion lingers on Seungwoo’s face, but his expression softens a bit at Jinhyuk’s omission. He looks a little sorry, guilty, as though he’s just as disappointed that Jinhyuk’s still struggling with this age-old heartache. “Jinhyuk,” he starts, “why were you running away in the first place?” 

“Because,” he attempts. He doesn’t know. Or he _does_ know, but he doesn’t want to admit it. “Because I didn’t think—he _left_. I thought he left. For good.” 

“You really thought he’d leave just like that?” Seungwoo hesitates before running a hand through his hair, looking especially tired in the moment. “No—you really thought he’d leave _you_ just like that?” 

He isn’t sure.

The rational part of him knows Wooseok would never. They’ve spent too much time together, wasted too many years breathing in the same air, in the same space. If Wooseok had zero plans of coming back, he never would have said goodbye in the first place, wouldn’t have responded to Jinhyuk’s most distressing texts, wouldn’t have humored the five-thousand pictures Jinhyuk sent Wooseok’s way of the most mundane things he’d find on his walk to work. 

But there’s a larger, more impressionable part of him—the stupid, foolish, punch-drunk portion of his heart that’s tired of dealing with the blows, with the surprises. 

He’s usually optimistic but with Wooseok? It feels more and more terrifying by the day getting his hopes up. 

“A part of me did, yeah.”

Seungsik makes a tiny noise of sympathy. “That’s so dumb of you, Jinhyuk,” he says, tone fond. “You know Wooseok didn’t keep in touch with anyone else while he was gone, right? All we got from him were updates through you. He should be glad he has such understanding friends! If he ran away for any other reason, I would have throttled him the second I saw him!” 

“He’s a jerk, isn’t he?” Jinhyuk shakes his head. “Can’t believe he didn’t send any pictures of buildings to you guys!” He’s joking, really, but at this point, he’s talking because he doesn’t know what else to do. Wooseok didn’t keep in touch with anyone else? For three grueling years, all he peppered Jinhyuk with was suspense. For three grueling years, he gave the rest of the world silence. 

But Seungsik talks like he knows something, _knew_ something about why Wooseok left in the first place. 

“He sent a picture to me,” Seungwoo interjects. He rubs at his eye. “The one with the sun at the top. He sent that one to me. Said he thought he was making progress but maybe not.”

“He said he built everything for someone he ran away from in Korea,” Jinhyuk blurts out. He isn’t smiling anymore, and a shudder of a breath leaves him in one exhale. “Why would he run away from anyone in Korea?” 

“I wonder,” Seungwoo muses. “I wonder what I would have done if I was in love with Seungsik—had _been_ in love with Seungsik for the larger portion of my life and he up and decided to date some stranger for a month. A month turns into two, three, four, and then it’s time to figure out what the future holds and an opportunity to get away from everything that’s causing me grief pops up.” 

Oh.

“I don’t know about you, but I’d take it.” 

_Oh_.

“Ha.” His hand’s trembling again. “I didn’t even—”

Seungsik reaches across the table to squeeze Jinhyuk’s hand. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says placatingly. “Neither of you guys are at fault.” 

“Yeah,” agrees Seungwoo. “If anything, you guys both needed that time to heal. To grow up.”

“He ran away from me?” Jinhyuk swallows thickly. He rephrases; it isn’t a question. “_I_ was the one he was running away from.”

“Let’s just call it a break,” Seungwoo suggests, a faint smile on his face. He rubs at his eye again, drags his hand down his face. “He might have disappeared, but he’s back now. He came back and he must have _some_ good reason for it.” 

Jinhyuk thinks about the first night: ten at night, a marriage proposal, the unwavering look in Wooseok’s eye even after Jinhyuk had stammered out the worst excuse. Maybe neither of them takes the marriage pact seriously anymore. 

But maybe Jinhyuk wishes he could go back in time to the first night and channel his eighteen-year-old self, drunk off of cheap alcohol and the idea of spending _forever_ with Wooseok. 

“The building with the sun?” He’s talking to himself more than he is to Seungwoo or Seungsik now. He _is_ connecting the dots—if only Byungchan could see him now. 

“I guess you were _his_ sun,” Seungsik says, grinning. “Always! His baby sun!” 

“Hey,” Seungwoo warns, his tone exaggeratedly petulant, reaching to pinch Seungsik’s cheek. “Don’t call Jinhyuk pet names while I’m right here.” 

“It’s okay,” Jinhyuk continues, letting his head fall back, gaze fixed on the ceiling. The sun-shaped clock—Wooseok’s expression lighting up as he talked about why _this_ building was his proudest. Oh, _oh_. His head feels light. His entire chest feels tight with feeling. “It’s _okay_ for me to be in love with Wooseok.” 

“Yeah.” Seungwoo tilts his head to the side. “It only makes sense. Since you were ten, since you were eighteen, since a few months ago when Wooseok moved back—it only makes sense.” 

Seungwoo’s right.

It’s all Jinhyuk knows. 

* * *

Wooseok doesn’t text him. 

Three years’ worth of habit would have convinced Jinhyuk to keep to himself, to refrain from reaching out first. He doesn’t know what’s going on in Wooseok’s mind. Maybe he’s _busy_, maybe he’s not in the mood to talk. 

But some habits are meant to be broken (others—not so much). His feet lead him straight to Wooseok’s apartment the next morning, hand hovering over the door knob right when the door swings open from the other side. 

Wooseok’s balancing rolls and rolls of what are probably complicated designs in one arm, his bag balancing precariously on the other shoulder, the coffee tumbler sitting inside it nearly tipping over with each movement he makes. “No, the vegetated roof—what? No, there are two different companies. We can go with the local one if we don’t need the longer warranty because having the containers will make any dead spots easier to replace, but if they don’t want to hire third-parties for replacement c—”

Jinhyuk lifts a hand to wave. Meekly. 

Wooseok blinks. “Uh—sorry, Minhyun? Let me call you back.” He pauses, and then adds, “I might be late to the office. Yeah, talk to you later.” 

Patiently, he waits until Wooseok manages to end the call. Jinhyuk reaches forward to sweep the bag—impossibly heavy—off of Wooseok’s shoulder, righting the coffee mug in a more secure position in the process. 

“Hey?” Wooseok greets. “Before you ask, I had the porridge.” 

“And the medicine?” 

“And the medicine. Don’t you have work or something? You don’t have to babysit me.”

“It’s Saturday, Wooseok,” Jinhyuk says. “My grade-schoolers probably don’t have much to say about vegetated roofs.”

“Big project,” Wooseok grumbles, in lieu of more in-depth explanation. “Are you walking me to work, _honey_?” 

“Should you even be going to work?” Jinhyuk asks, dwelling a little too long on the way his heart skips a beat. “You had a fever last night. I’m sure you can afford to take today off too.” 

“I’m fine. Sorry for ruining our record of illness-free Friday nights.” For a second, Wooseok looks uncomfortable, and then the tightness of his lips softens, his eyes curving ever-so-slightly into a trace of a smile. “Feels weird having someone worry about me like this. I didn’t even tell my mom I was sick.”

Jinhyuk hesitates before reaching over to grab the roll files out of Wooseok’s hands too. 

“Hey—” Wooseok frowns, protesting. “You don’t have to—”

“Sorry, I do.” His hands are jittery. A part of him just wants to hold Wooseok’s hand, wants to ask, _When was the last time_? He’s thinking about Dohyon and Jinwoo again, about the things Wooseok said to him yesterday in a fever-induced trance—right before bridging the gap to grab Jinhyuk’s hand. 

_Do you remember_? Jinhyuk can’t bring himself to say it. _Did you mean it_? _Do you still_? 

“Best friend privileges,” he explains with a grin. 

The walk to Wooseok’s office is relatively quiet after that. This is how Wooseok operates: bursts of energy punctuated with comfortable silences. Jinhyuk’s learned over the years how to navigate it because if he has to be, if he wants to be, Jinhyuk’s a constant stream of word and energy. Wooseok gets tired, though, so Jinhyuk’s intentional about saving time, saving _words_, for what’s important. 

Unsurprisingly, the firm Wooseok works at is the pinnacle of modern minimalism. All glass walls, open spaces, high ceilings. Cubicles and offices seem nonexistent up until a row of more glass panels in the back, partitioned by heavy warehouse-esque doors and single slabs of concrete in lieu of walls. 

“Feels like I’m not hip enough to exist in here,” Jinhyuk says. 

“You’re not,” Wooseok agrees, teasing. He pushes the door to his office, a corner furthest away from the elevators, open, grabbing the files and the bag from Jinhyuk to settle them on a chair. There’s another empty chair a few feet away, sitting by a small model house contained in a ceiling-less glass case. “That’s okay.” 

Almost immediately, Wooseok rushes to his desk, seating himself in front of a giant calendar he’s crossing things out on. 

“Sorry, just let me—”

“You’re good,” Jinhyuk says, taking the time to survey the premises. Wooseok’s office is bare for the most part, limited in furniture except for the desk, a giant ficus plant, two chairs, the glass case, and a few stray picture frames littered around the space. 

A picture of Wooseok’s mom. A picture of his favorite building—the one with the _sun_. 

Air catches in his throat. His hand hovers over a third frame sitting on an unused bookshelf. A picture of Wooseok and Jinhyuk on their high school graduation. _Ah_. He can’t keep running away from this.

Jinhyuk sucks in a breath. “Hey, uh—” He’s not ready for this, is he? And it’s gotten to the point where Jinhyuk’s almost certain he never will be. He has to take some risks, take a few leaps of faith, but that’s hard with Wooseok. It’s too _dangerous_ with Wooseok, because that stupid, fickle voice always reminds Jinhyuk: _One wrong move, and maybe he’ll disappear again._ Jinhyuk silences his thoughts. “What’s this?” 

Wooseok glances up from his notes to the model house Jinhyuk’s pointing at. His expression changes instantaneously from one of composed neutrality to something less practiced. He’s startled—and then the tips of his ears turn pink. “Oh,” Wooseok says. “That’s—” His ears turn brighter. “That’s our house.” 

“Our house?” Jinhyuk crouches down by the case to get a better look. Black roof, white walls, a white picket fence. A lot of green—unrealistic in Seoul, but their dreams were never meant to be _realistic_. A smattering of windows; definitely more than five rooms. His heart squeezes. “Oh.” 

“It’s just—” Wooseok swallows thickly, returning his gaze to the calendar in front of him. His ears are still red and Jinhyuk feels the most elated sense of _longing_. “Just something I did for fun. As a distraction.” 

“Hey,” Jinhyuk tries again.

It’s hard to breathe. Always has been, in _so many_ different ways when it comes to Wooseok. 

“Did you run away from Seoul because you thought I’d never love you back?” 

Now it’s out there and Jinhyuk can’t take it back. 

Wooseok’s shoulders tense, and from where Jinhyuk’s standing, he can see the way Wooseok’s hand trembles. The silence lasts a lifetime and Wooseok is careful as he lifts his head, eyes glassy. Jinhyuk’s reminded of Jinwoo again. His heart aches, and aches, and aches. 

“I was right, wasn’t I?” Wooseok asks, the half-hearted tug of his lips fixed into a stereotypical smirk. 

“You weren’t,” Jinhyuk says quickly. Standing here, at the opposite end of the office, Jinhyuk feels like he’s shouting his thoughts into water. He wants to be next to Wooseok, wants to be _touching_ Wooseok, but his heart nearly leaps out of his throat at the thought. “You were wrong. I did love you back.” 

Wooseok frowns, lips pursed, eyes redder by the second. He looks angry, upset, and Jinhyuk has to convince himself not to back down. “Okay? That was then and this is now.” Wooseok exhales sharply. “I’m busy. Can you—”

“Wooseok, it’s true. I was in love with you.” Jinhyuk smiles, can’t wrap his mind around the way he grows fonder of Wooseok by the second. Each milestone seems impossible to beat, and then he looks at Wooseok again and proves himself wrong. How _cheesy_. “I’m still in love with you. I’ve spent too many years of my life being in love with you, but I don’t care. I’m going to stay in love with you. So please stay in love with me.” 

Pin-drop silence again and Wooseok clenches his jaw, looks down. “What are you saying, you idio—”

It’s Jinhyuk’s turn to bridge the gap this time, and his head feels lighter and lighter with each step he takes until he’s crouching by Wooseok, hands cupping Wooseok’s face, forcing him to lift his gaze, to look at Jinhyuk. 

“Do you remember what you said to me last night?” 

Wooseok averts his eyes—tries to. “That—I was _sick_.” 

“You were,” Jinhyuk agrees. The smile on his lips grows by the second. “But did you mean it?” 

“Everything I built was for you. That was the only thing that got me through Tokyo. But, I thought when you—told me that you were dating Byungchan…” Wooseok looks up, a tiny laugh of disbelief slipping past his lips like a sigh, a scoff. “I thought that meant—that you were beyond it. Past it. Past _me_. That you didn’t want to put up with me. That the years I spent away were enough to change—”

“I panicked.” Jinhyuk could laugh right now. His thumb brushes across Wooseok’s cheek, catching a single stray tear. “I’m sorry. I panicked. I couldn’t understand why or _how_ you were standing in front of me that night—what I could possibly have done in a past live to _deserve_ that. It felt like if I blinked, you might disappear again. I’m sorry. I should have said yes. Want to get married right now? We can go to City Hall. I bet my parents would be thrilled. Your mom will probably cry.” 

This time, Wooseok really laughs, his gaze finally level with Jinhyuk’s. Any other person and an age-long love would be exhausting, but it’s moments like these—when Wooseok’s smile is unrestrained, wholly genuine, a secret slipped into an empty room—that remind Jinhyuk that loving Wooseok will always be the exception. 

“We’re not getting married, you idiot.”

“You asked first,” Jinhyuk protests, his expression still fixed into a grin. He could cry too. “No take-backs. We made a pact.”

Wooseok lifts his own hand, resting it on top of Jinhyuk’s. The curve of his lips ebbs into something quieter. “Jinhyuk, thank you,” he says, his voice wavering. “For showing up in my life—for _staying_ in it.” 

Jinhyuk kisses him then. No fireworks, no jolts of electricity. Just the sensation of Wooseok smiling against Jinhyuk’s lips, the feel of his arms coiling around Jinhyuk’s neck, pulling him closer and closer until there’s no room for distance between them anymore. 

“I love you,” Jinhyuk says again when they pull away, his forehead pressed against Wooseok’s. “Marry me someday, okay? We’ll make a new pact.”

“I love you too.” Wooseok leans in to kiss Jinhyuk one more time. “No more pacts. We don’t need them.”

* * *

“Just know, if Jinhyuk ever does you dirty, I’m _always_ here to freeload,” Yein says through a dramatic sniffle. “I’d make a great house-husband.” 

“You microwave water because you’re too lazy to _boil_ it.” 

“It’s called time-management? I’m good at it? Jinhyuk, can you let your insecurities calm down a little? I’m trying to appeal to your boyfriend.” 

_Boyfriend_. Jinhyuk grins. That has a nice ring to it. 

“Euuuugh, look at that smile on his face! He’s enjoying it too much! So gross!” Byungchan teases.

“What?” Jinhyuk asks, trying with much futility to appear unsuspecting, innocent. He reaches out to take Wooseok’s hand, deliberate about lacing their fingers. “He _is_ my boyfriend.” 

Wooseok looks up from his phone, hardly processing the conversation before saying, too easily, “Yeah. And I love him.” 

The group bursts into synchronized groans of disgust when Jinhyuk pecks him on the cheek. 

* * *

**EPILOGUE**

In a few months, Wooseok’s due to enlist. Twenty-four months of waiting, all over again, and had their journey been any different, maybe Jinhyuk would have been more anxious about it. 

He _is_ anxious but for different reasons. The past year of having Wooseok back in his life _for keeps_ has been too good to him, and it’s unfair how quickly they lapse into being lovers—as though they’d been waiting for it all of their lives. 

He’ll be sad to wake up to an empty bed on colder days. Six months into dating officially, Wooseok moves in, abandoning his upscale apartment for Jinhyuk’s. “_It’s more comfortable_,” he’d explained to Jinhyuk. “_I like it. It reminds me of you_.” Six months later, the house seems too empty on the nights when Wooseok works late. 

“I looked really ugly when I shaved my head. I hope you do too,” Jinhyuk says, gaze flickering from the television screen, to the stack of _One Piece_ volumes he still hasn’t moved, to the model house—the _dream house_—Wooseok’s since moved from the office into their living room. “It’s only fair, you know?” 

Wooseok elbows him in the side with _purpose_ before wriggling free from Jinhyuk’s arms, getting up. “Want anything from the kitchen?”

“Nah,” Jinhyuk yawns out, stretching his body along the length of the couch. “Hey, on your way back, could you check the house and see if I left my pen there?” 

From the kitchen, he can hear Wooseok laugh. “Why would your pen be there?” A glass clinks. The sound of running water stops. 

“I like to spend my mornings loitering around your idea of our future,” Jinhyuk says as seriously as he can manage, voice extra dramatic for comedic effect. “Also, I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t find it. Might as well check.”

“You’re so lazy,” Wooseok says, rolling his eyes as he emerges from the kitchen. Regardless, he does as asked, making a detour on his way back to the couch to crouch by the model house. His eyes narrow from behind his lenses and Wooseok seems to spot something, reaching over the glass walls to procure what might be Jinhyuk’s missing pen. “Hey…”

Jinhyuk doesn’t move from the couch, only outstretches his arms when Wooseok opens his palm to reveal two silver rings. 

“What is this?” Wooseok asks, even though he _knows_. He stumbles toward Jinhyuk before climbing onto the couch beside him, letting Jinhyuk pull him closer, tighter. 

No kneeling, no fireworks, nothing overdone or too gaudy. Maybe proposals are supposed to be more exciting than this, but Wooseok’s always seemed to appreciate quieter moments more than fanfare. 

“Marry me, Kim Wooseok.” Jinhyuk grins, pressing a kiss to Wooseok’s forehead. “For real this time.” 

“We’re not eighteen anymore,” Wooseok mumbles, angling his head up to kiss Jinhyuk on the lips. “You have to mean it.”

“I meant it then,” Jinhyuk says. “Mean it now. Say yes?”

Wooseok looks at Jinhyuk, his expression almost unreadable before it seems to resign itself, shifting into one of unfiltered gratitude, affection, elation. He tugs at Jinhyuk’s hand, sliding one of the rings down Jinhyuk’s finger without saying so much as a word. 

“_Yes._”

**Author's Note:**

> fuck mnet


End file.
